> | it would probably please me to see a few spammers have their hands > | (or other body parts) cut off on worldwide television, but I don't > | know that that would solve the problem. > > The problem is pretty clearly economic in that sending spam is close > to free; it probably makes sense to look at economic solutions. As > far back as 1995, Marshall Rose was charging (via First Virtual) to > read email from you if you were not on a white list. Perhaps the IETF > should consider standardizing such a charging mechanisms? this is a complex problem; it needs to be understood from several different perspectives: fixed users, mobile users, ISPs, even spammers. off-the-cuff proposals seem unlikely to help. Keith